PhillyClout Team

The city on Feb. 15 will start mailing notices to land owners about what the assessed value of their properties will be under the Nutter administration's new property tax system, which is slated to go into effect next year, officials said Tuesday.

Those assessments will not include what tax bills will be because Council has to approve tax rates, which it is supposed to do by summer time.

Council members will receive information on how the new assessments impact specific neighborhoods within the next eight days, city Finance Director Rob Dubow said Tuesday. That information will become public soon after.

With the Feb. 15 mailing, property owners will also receive information on how to appeal their new assessments to the Office of Property Assessment. The deadline to do so is March 31. If, upon hearing back from OPA, you're still unhappy with the decision, you can appeal to the city Board of Revision of Taxes by Oct. 1. After that, residents will have to take the city to court to change get their assessments changed.

The Actual Value Initiative seeks to fix Philly's problematic property-tax system, which bills thousands of properties based on outdated assessments, by determining the current value of every plot in the city. Nutter has said the purpose is to create a fairer system, not to raise revenue.

The administration also said Tuesday that the total taxable value of properties in Philadelphia, according to the new assessments, has reached $98.5 billion, up incrementally from the past estimate. Under the current system, the total value of the city's taxable land is worth $38 billion.

Only 5,000 properties haven't been assessed yet. Owners of those plots may be notified in a separate mailing later in February or March.